Gannett agreed to buy ReachLocal, a digital advertising services company, they said in a news release Monday. The deal, which Gannett said has an enterprise value of $156 million, was approved by the companies’ boards and is expected to be completed in Q3. It's subject to expiration of the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period and other customary closing conditions. Gannett CEO Bob Dickey said the acquisition adds digital marketing products to Gannett’s portfolio, plus about $320 million in annual digital revenue.

An apparent “error” in a slide presented during the June 16 webinar on ATSC 3.0's “Ins and Outs” (see 1606160052) prompted webinar producer Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers to take the unusual step Friday of issuing an “updated slide” that restores July 31 as the date when the candidate-standard period expires for the A/341 document on ATSC 3.0 video. The original slide, presented on the webinar by Skip Pizzi, NAB senior director-new media technologies, said the expiration date had been pushed back by two months to Sept. 30, prompting an extended discussion in the webinar’s Q&A in which Pizzi and Dave Siegler, vice president-technical operations at Cox Media Group, described how ATSC’s S34-1 ad hoc group on ATSC 3.0 video needed more time to pick a winning high-dynamic-range proposal for the A/341 document. But that unexpected disclosure appeared to take by surprise ATSC President Mark Richer, who told us Pizzi mistakenly jumped the gun on publicizing a two-month deadline extension, and July 31 remains the expiration date until ATSC’s Technology Group 3 (TG3) changes it, which it may do when it meets in mid-July. Pizzi provided the corrected slide, said Joel Welch, SMPTE director-education, in a Friday email to participants in the June 16 webinar. The new slide still says, as it did in the original, that a winning HDR proposal will be picked in Q3, though S34-1 representatives told ATSC's annual broadcast conference last month the winning technology would be chosen by July 31 (see 1605100047). Welch has "no explanation" why the new stack of slides also contained one slide that hadn’t been part of the original presentation, except that Pizzi provided only the corrected slide on HDR's status, Welch emailed us Friday. Titled “Subject to Change,” the new slide summarizes ATSC’s standard public disclaimer: “Specialist Groups and ad hoc groups have made preliminary decisions to select technologies for incorporation in ATSC 3.0. Selections of all technologies are subject to approval of TG3 and ultimately the Voting Membership in accordance with ATSC due process.”

The Multicultural Media, Internet and Telecom Council narrowed its list of proposed media ownership diversity initiatives to five that should be included in the order FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler committed to circulating June 30 (see 1606240076), in a letter filed Friday in docket 14-50. The five proposals include creating a civil rights division within the Enforcement Bureau, extending cable rules governing procurement from minority-owned businesses to broadcasting, and examining minority ownership effects from all FCC general rulemakings. Other proposals are formulas for calculating diversity, and a proposal to replace the eight-voices test with “Market-Based Tradable Diversity Credits.” A market-based system “would be analogous to the operation of carbon trading as a market-based means of reducing pollution,” MMTC said. It set aside 19 other diversity docket proposals as being impractical or no longer applicable, though some could be refiled later.

The FCC will allow San Francisco Public Press and San Francisco Community Radio to reach a voluntary time-share agreement for a new low-power FM station in San Francisco, it said in an order Friday. The two prospective licensees have the same number of points in the bureau's selection system, the order said. Three other prospective licensees were eliminated for not having proper access to their station headquarters, late filing and other flaws, the order said. Commissioners approved the order 5-0. It was among the items voted on as part of the consent agenda, before commissioners' Friday meeting.

An FCC draft order on creating new emergency alert system codes was withdrawn from the commissioner meeting agenda Friday morning. An agency spokesman told us it’s expected to be adopted “soon.” Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said he hadn't voted on the item when it was unexpectedly pulled because of its “horrible” cost-benefit analysis. The item, which would create specific EAS codes for high winds and storm surges, wasn't expected to be controversial (see 1606220063).

The same reasoning used by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in vacating FCC joint sales agreement attribution rules prevents the agency from eliminating the UHF discount without examining the nationwide broadcast ownership cap, said NAB in a letter to the commission posted online Thursday in docket 13-26. Just as the 3rd Circuit said attribution rules don't exist separately from the ownership rules they're based on, “there would be no need to have the UHF discount if it were not for the national TV ownership cap,” NAB said. The FCC can't “logically demonstrate that making the national TV ownership rule more stringent by removing the UHF discount serves the public interest without examining the cap itself,” said NAB. Removing the UHF discount without examining the national cap “will not withstand judicial scrutiny,” NAB said,

The FCC should eliminate the eight voices test and newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule, NAB wrote the agency, posted in docket 14-50 Tuesday. That cross-ownership rule "affirmatively harms localism," and "exacerbates the perilous state of the newspaper industry," NAB said. The eight voices test "erroneously assumes that broadcast TV stations exist in a separate competitive universe that lacks multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), the Internet, online and mobile video services and all other competitors," NAB said. "That assumption is contrary to reality." The FCC can't use the incentive auction as a basis for not concluding the 2010 and 2014 quadrennial reviews in the time frame established by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, NAB said. "Because Congress and the Commission already have decided that reducing the number of TV stations will serve the public interest, the Commission cannot properly use that public interest judgment as a basis to further delay fulfilling its obligation."

NAB held a groundbreaking ceremony at the Capital Riverfront site of its new headquarters Monday. Located at 1 M St. SE, Washington, the building is expected to be completed in two years and make it easier for broadcasters to lobby nearby Capitol Hill (see 1504070056). NAB President Gordon Smith said the new building is “a statement” that broadcasters should remain a cornerstone of telecom. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and NAB Joint Board Chairman and Tegna President Dave Lougee spoke.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued three notices of apparent liability proposing $50,000 total in fines for three TV stations that violated public file rules. Winstar Odessa, licensee of KWWT Odessa, Texas, faces a proposed $20,000 fine for failing to file children’s TV programming reports on time for 16 quarters; KSQA Topeka, Kansas, faces a $15,000 fine for similar violations over 14 quarters; and Rama Communications faces a proposed $15,000 fine for violating the main studio and public file access rules at its WQBQ(AM), Leesburg, Florida, according to the NALs.

An FCC-proposed rule change to lower skywave protections for Class A AM stations could limit the reach of presidential emergency alerts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency Integrated Public Alert Warning System Program Management Office commented in a filing posted Thursday in docket 15-91. Presidential messages are intended for use during massive, nationwide disasters. The proposal to lower skywave protections is part of the FCC's AM revitalization rulemaking. It would create “extended areas where stations with which FEMA does not have direct communications pathways may cause interference” to currently protected radio broadcasts, that agency said. The protected stations are usually larger, and the FCC proposal is seen as making it easier for smaller AM stations to sustain their business model. The smaller stations “most likely depend on a relay of the Presidential message” from other stations, FEMA IPAWS PMO said. The FCC proposal would lower the number of stations that receive presidential alerts directly from FEMA, the filing said. “Due to this newly proposed interference, the reach of a Presidential message at a critical time would be diminished. FEMA urges the FCC not to authorize reduced protection to Class A AM skywave service.” The comments came in an emergency alert system proceeding where industry urged the FCC to go slow with EAS changes (see 1606090070).